It Was a Day for American Flags and Patriotism

Several thousand people turned out Monday in downtown San Diego to cheer their favorite fighters--the military veterans who have served the United States.

It was Veterans Day, a time for a parade, a time for remembrances, a time to notice others fighting society’s battles at home.

But first the parade.

Down Broadway through a 10-block-long gauntlet of an estimated 5,000 well-wishers strode America’s warriors of past and present.

They ranged from San Diego Army reservists recently returned from the Gulf War, to a gay and lesbian contingent of the San Diego Veterans Assn., to the survivors of the Bataan Death March in World War II Philippines.

Retired Army Master Sgt. Charles Williams, 66, after serving for 19 years, has seen the ebb and flow of civilian support for veterans.

Upon return from combat in World War II and the Korean War, Williams attended dozens of parades. He’s felt the euphoria of a World War II homecoming, the indifference following Korea and the scorn after Vietnam.

Although not euphoric, the crowd Monday was congenial, Williams said. Support for the military in a post-Desert Storm era has been generally enthusiastic.

“It’s nice to see those tanks,” he said, as the Army’s 3rd Battalion of the 185th Armor Division, based in Clairemont, cruised past Horton Plaza in dust-colored Lamplighter tanks.

A former infantry soldier in the 64th Heavy Tank Battalion, Williams said the sight of the gun turrets with their 105-millimeter barrel extended brought out a strange sense of familiarity, if not comfort.

“I guess I sometimes get to feeling left out because I’m turning older,” he said.

Williams sported a Purple Heart on his sweater and an Oak Leaf cluster pinned to his cap. A patch sewn to the cap identified him as a lifelong member of the Disabled American Veterans Assn. Williams walks with a cane because of permanent damage he suffered from 15 bullet and shrapnel wounds, he said.

“There’s a lot to remember on Veterans Day,” he said.

There were some who said civilians aren’t doing enough to honor the veterans.

Army Sgt. Barry White, 51, said downtown businesses that remained open on the holiday annoyed him.

“Even though there’s a lot of spirit right here,” he said, motioning toward the procession as it trundled along the barricaded stretch between 9th Avenue and State Street, “it pisses me off that a lot of businesses are working today. I think it’s disrespectful.”

White said he believes the nation’s slow economy made it hard to shut down businesses for the day.

“Because of the recession, it’s understandable that smaller businesses are going to be straining for every dollar. But big corporations have no excuse.”

David Smith, a manager at San Diego Gas & Electric Co., said that, although his office stayed open, about half the employees in his office took an optional vacation day off.

“I don’t think I’m being disrespectful at all . . .,” said Smith, a Vietnam combat veteran who went to work Monday, but saw a glimpse of the parade during his lunch hour.

“The principle we all have been fighting for in these wars is liberty, and, if people have a problem with giving me the freedom to choose when I want to work and when I take vacation time, they are wrong.”

The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard--the active and the resting--all shared late-morning sunshine and pavement with foot soldiers waging another war, a fight against homelessness and poverty on the home front.

Resplendent in dress blues, was Capt. Don Bell, commander of the Salvation Army in San Diego, who took a break from work shortly before noon to listen to the Marine Corps Color Guard Band display its brass.

Bell said his war is with homelessness. The victims he said he sees are about 2,000 men and women who come to Salvation Army centers in San Diego to be fed each day. Four hundred of them bed down each night at Salvation Army shelters.

On State Street, as the parade turned the corner south and clamored by, young Muslims dressed in suits, sunglasses and bow ties distributed a news magazine published by the Nation of Islam.

The magazine, the Final Call, featured a cover story on the fight against AIDS. At the parade, Nation of Islam members stopped African-Americans and described to them an AIDS treatment developed in Kenya that reportedly has been successful.

The Nation of Islam, the Chicago-based Muslim group led by Minister Louis Farrakhan, has also waged a campaign to improve crime-ridden neighborhoods and to rehabilitate drug addicts and street gang members.

Farrakhan’s African-American group has said that it promotes black self-sufficiency as a way to combat racial discrimination.

As members of the Nation of Islam solicited support, the parade moved on.